If you’ve been reading reviews on the site for the last couple of months, you’ve probably noticed my love for these Swedish men of complete and total madness. After being completely awe-struck by the magnificent Deathrace King, the first thing I did was to get their entire discography simply to experience more satanic and deadly thrashing madness. This was originally released under the name of Crown of Thorns, but after another band with the same name filed a law-suit agains them, they changed their name to The Crown, which this was later re-issued under. Anyway, The Burning was released in 1995 while the Gothenburg melodic death metal-scene was exploding.Their colleagues in both In Flames, At The Gates and Dark Tranquility had some releases under their belt, while bands like The Haunted and Soilwork entered the stage some years later. As some of you might have noticed, The Crown took a slightly different direction, combining mindless intensity with a dose of melody instead of the opposite, pleasing the death part of the crowd.

Although this isn’t particularly near either Hell is Here, Deathrace King or Possessed 13 in terms of quality, it’s still pretty damned good. Johan Lindstrand doesn’t sound quite as insane as he does on the above, and is going a lot deeper in his growls. The guitars are as furious as ever yet still with the desired touches of melody that makes this band stick out from the crowd. Janne Saarenpää punishes the drums at Slayer-esque speed and with intense brutality, crushing everything around him into a fiery bloodied inferno. While this is mostly more thrash than death metal, there are some almost entirely pure death metal tunes here. The monstrous Forever Heaven Gone are driven by Linstrand’s brutally deep growls, digging deeper into your flesh with every second, while the incredibly short and fast tempo-shifts are out to rip your face off and throw it to the dogs. Tevronen and Sunneson’s brilliant and technically slick guitar-playing is also separating this from your typical Gothenburg band. Where your regular melodic death’sters focus on melody, these guys focus on thrilling and impressively fast guitar-work that’s not at all out to lower the intensity and focus on the melody. They are meant to slay, and the two axe-men successfully accomplishes that mission with great skill. Lyrically, the focus is on the regular stuff. It’s as Anti-Christian and badass as you’ll get it without ever looking back. There are however some exceptions. You’ve probably already figured out what the tune Lord of the Rings discusses, while Night of the Swords takes a different and more interesting approach, more or less dealing with the deniers of Holocaust and wanting to literally `murder and burn that made-up master race-shit`.

This is undeniably The Crown from beginning to end. The riffs, the intensity, the anger, the sick rhythmic work, and the as always outstanding vocal work are all there. Although the production isn’t too good, and the overall quality of the songs are occasionally dipping near average, this is still a great deal better than any other debuts from the aforementioned and other melodic death metallers. Nothing pleases me more than bands that know what they’re doing and that are showing signs of going in the right direction already on their first release. The Crown are one of the few bands that managed this, and while this isn’t as good as its descendants it is still worthy a spin or six hundred and sixty six.